The present invention relates generally to wind driven turbines. More particularly, the invention concerns a partial admission centrifugal turbine powered by atmospheric wind to drive an electrical generator.
Wind driven generators are known in the art. For example, a wind powered generator using a wind driven rotor having a plurality of parallel vanes arranged circumferentially around a vertical axis has been used to drive a generator. A housing around the rotor has a movable inlet vane to direct wind toward one side of the rotor. The housing itself may be rotatable so as to adjust to the direction of oncoming wind. Further, if desired, the assembly can be mounted on top of an automobile. See U.S. Pat. No. 5,038,049, issued to Kato on Aug. 6, 1991.
Generators are also known in which air supplied by wind is separated into a plurality of parallel portions which are applied to different parts of the rotor. See U.S. Pat. No. 4,350,900, issued to Baughman on Sep. 21, 1982. Moreover, various configurations for wind driven vanes used in wind turbines are known, such as symmetric airfoil shaped vanes of the Baughman patent, straight but radially canted vanes (see U.S. Pat. No. 4,179,007 issued to Howe on Dec. 18, 1979), radially curved vanes without inlet flow direction (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,278,896, issued to McFarland on Jul. 14, 1981; 4,031,405, issued to Asperger on Jun. 21, 1977; and 2,667,589, issued to Levrero on Jan. 26, 1954), radially curved vanes with inlet flow direction (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,047,834, issued to Magoveny et al. on Sep. 13, 1977; and 1,903,307, issued to Gillio on Apr. 4, 1933), Darrieus type rotors (see U.S. Pat. No. 4,162,410, issued to Amick on Jul. 24, 1979). It is also known to provide a variable area throat arrangement for wind driven turbines. See, U.S. Pat. No. 3,944,840, issued to Troll on Mar. 16, 1976.
Other rotor arrangements, such as axial flow configurations, are also known, including for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,508,973, issued to Payne on Apr. 2, 1985, 4,398,096, issued to Faurholtz on Aug. 9, 1983, and 4,288,704, issued to Bosard on Sep. 8, 1981.
In general, however, the known prior art devices use turbine blades like windmills, that is, wind is used to push the blades. Some prior art devices use the turbine blades such that wind aerodynamically interacts with the blades to drive them. However, the known prior art devices are not seen to use wind to push the blades in part of a blade channel while aerodynamically driving the blades at other parts of the channel, while substantially all of the blade cascade is used to drive the turbine with one and/or the other wind-and-blade interaction. Accordingly, the prior art devices do not use the atmospheric power source in the most advantageous manner.